


The Masks We Wear

by lennydotdotdot



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Complicated Relationships, Found Family, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, Inquisitor Tabris, Named Tabris (Dragon Age), One-sided solavellan, Platonic Relationships, Redemption, Second Chances, Self-Loathing, complicated relationships all around!, female rogue lavellan - Freeform, lying liar who lies, momma tabris in flashbacks, platonic solavellan, referrenced momma tabris, the inquisitor was an asshole
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-04
Updated: 2019-06-17
Packaged: 2020-04-07 20:17:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 7,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19092370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lennydotdotdot/pseuds/lennydotdotdot
Summary: Kallain has spent a decade running from her mistakes, but she can't run forever.Wherein Lavellan was born and raised in the Denerim Alienage.





	1. You Are Dalish

“You are Dalish? But clearly away from the rest of your clan.”

Kallain glanced over her shoulder at the elven mage of their party, peeking under her thick black hair. She was at once a little annoyed and a little understanding. She had Andruil branded all over her face in ink so harshly black that even her father would struggle to recognize her and yet she still had to answer this question. But she recalled a time when she and her cousins daydreamed about running off to join the Dalish, how mythical and wild they seemed. And free. And she remembered how some in the Alienage used to shrug and say the Dalish were only a myth, while others would swear up down and sideways that their second cousin thrice removed ran off to join the Dalish.

The reality wasn’t so romantic. It was a lot of the same anxiety she’d dealt with back in the alienage. Would humans chance upon their camp and drive them out? Would they use force? Would there be time to escape before they razed the camp?

And then there was foraging. Food could be scarce some winters and Kallain and the other adults of the clan had to carefully ration their food so the children and sick could eat well, and sometimes that meant going hungry herself. It wasn’t new to her – her mother had taught her to hunt for a reason. The types of sickness one would encounter in the woods were different than those in the city, but no less brutal. And some of the Dalish cuisines had startled Kallain at first, though she grew used to it in time.

Solas took her pause and ran with it before she could answer. “I have had run-ins with your people on more than one occasion.”

Kallain huffed and turned ahead. She didn’t care to dignify him with a response. Not now. She knew bait when she smelled it.

“Silence, is it? As you wish.”

“Can’t you elves play nice for once?” the dwarf grumbled.

They fought their way through demons towards the encampment towards the north, centered on a large bridge. Kallain readied herself. The last time she’d closed a rift, it hadn’t exactly hurt. No more than normal. Maybe a sting, maybe a little rush.

Like taking a deep breath and huffing it all out at once. It left her a little winded, a little off.

She couldn’t be that distracted in a fight. She knocked an arrow and let Cassandra rush into the demons headlong.

Solas and Varric were much appreciated support. Solas was handy with his staff, at least, and he made quick work of a few demons clever enough to stray past Cassandra and the other soldiers rushing to their aid. And Varric fought without honor, which in Kallain’s opinion was the only way to fight.

When the last of the demons fell, Solas turned to her. “Now! Before more come through!”

Kallain took a deep breath and hurled her hand towards the rift.

When it closed, it was like she’d let out a long breath.

Solas smiled at her, nodded. “You are becoming proficient at this.”

Kallain didn’t have it in her to smile back. She decided that if she somehow survived, she’d return with a witty one-liner. Something about how she was pleased to barely meet his expectations the other day, sorry about the attitude but she was dying at the time.

It didn’t make her feel better to think she’d get out of this alive.

If all it took to stop the sky ripping asunder was her life, then the world had gotten one hell of a bargain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is something that's been on my mind for some time now. A way to have my cake and eat it too, and rectify the lack of a city-elf perspective in DA:I. I am thinking I will be omitting many of the parts that occur as normal in canon or will reference them briefly, since copy/pasting canon dialogue isn't fun for me and probably isn't that fun to read. 
> 
> F!Tabris's origin is one of my favorites, and damn do I love a good redemption arc.


	2. March

When she woke, free of chains and in a warm, cozy cabin _about the same size as the Tabris home in Denerim_ she was confused. Her throat felt dry and as she straightened up her empty stomach rumbled, but she was awake. And alive. And the mark on her hand, though it glowed dimly under the wraps applied to her left arm, didn’t hurt.

The door to her cabin opened and a young elven girl with a bare face and high cheeks squeaked and dropped the crate she’d been carrying.

“I didn’t know you were awake, I swear.”

Kallain slowly set her feet on the floor as she asked, “Why are you frightened? What happened?”

The girl clasped her hands and straightened. “That’s wrong, isn’t it?” she stammered. “I-I said the wrong thing.”

“No,” Kallain said, “I don’t think so.”

The girl fell to her knees and bowed her head. “I beg your forgiveness. And your blessing – I am but a humble servant.”

Kallain felt a knot in her throat.

“You are back in Haven, my lady. They say you saved us. The Breach stopped growing, just like the mark on your hand.” Kallain couldn’t help but check the mark again, letting it flare under its bandages. Still no pain. No shooting up her arm, no burning, no smell of rot or char. “It’s all anyone has talked about for the last three days.”

 Kallain couldn’t respond to that, even if she could wrap her head around what she was saying. She was not a savior. She was not a hero. And there was no way she’d just been asleep for three entire days.

“I’m certain Lady Cassandra will want to know you’ve awakened. She said…at once!”

Kallain stood slowly, and she couldn’t help but feel uneasy as the elven girl stood, her back hunched and posture low, her head down. The way her father used to walk around humans, until he returned home to the alienage and stood tall and proud again.

“At once!”

The girl scurried out, but Kallain stayed frozen behind, awash in the chatter from outside the cabin, like heavy rain pattering on an old roof, leaking in. She forced herself to move forward and her feet were so heavy it was like wading through a swamp.

She’d never felt safe surrounded by humans, and this was no exception. She waded through the crowd, but she didn’t put her head down. It was so tempting to put her head down. It was so much easier. But she kept her head high, expecting jeers and insults, and began her death march.

She was exceedingly alarmed when she realized that the humans were _praising_ her.


	3. Herald

Cassandra’s shouting rattled the old bones of the Chantry and Kallain swallowed hard before shouldering forward. She was stunned when Cassandra referred to her as the chosen of Andraste. Cassandra, who had just a few days prior stared her down and _demanded_ to know why she had destroyed the Conclave, was now a bulwark between her and Rodrick, who demanded she be chained and brought for trial.

Kallain was not sure how she felt about that, but she played along and quoted the Chant, which brought a smile to Cassandra’s face.

 Of course Cassandra had no way of knowing the things that Kallain had yet to atone for, could never atone for, but the Conclave, as far as she knew, was not one of them. She could not remember exactly what had happened, only fragments, fleeing towards a bright light, a woman reaching out to her.

Still, she _knew_ she didn’t possess the power to cause a tear in the very sky. It did, however seem, that she had the power to fix it. So when Cassandra asked that she stay to do so, Kallain wondered if Andraste had perhaps chosen her after all, to atone for the sins of a life she abandoned long ago.

And again, she wondered if a more vengeful god hadn’t chosen to punish her for those very same sins. It seemed her very short excursion to Ferelden was to be extended.

She might even die here. She wondered if she would manage to die back in the Denerim Alienage, and prove true some of the less creative prophecies offered by Revered Mothers and Sisters and drunken lechers in the gutter.


	4. Impressions

Kallain next encountered Solas while looking for the alchemist Adan. He was standing outside one of the adjacent cabins to the one she was searching for, and for a moment Kallain considered whether she even wanted to speak to him.

“The Herald of Andraste, a blessed hero sent to save us all,” Solas quipped before she could duck into Adan’s cabin. She’d already made eye contact, but was it too late to pretend she didn’t hear him?

She couldn’t decide if he was mocking her or not. Kallain huffed and changed the subject.

“You know, I was thinking I’d tell you ‘sorry for being rude the other day, but I was dying at the time, pleased to barely meet your apparently low expectations of me,’ but that doesn’t fit here, now does it? That was back when everyone thought I did this to myself intentionally, and the bar seems to have been raised rather a lot.”

Solas kept the same expression nearly the entire time she was talking, a blend of irritation, perhaps at her changing the subject, and befuddlement. Maybe because she spoke so quickly. She could even hear a bit of her old Alienage twang coming through when she spoke quickly like that, and she wondered if he could hear it too, if he could recognize it, if he could peg her for Adaia and Cyrion’s girl—

He laughed thinly, like he hadn’t laughed in a hundred years, and said, “Joke as you will, posturing is necessary.”

\--She was too paranoid. His own accent hovered somewhere between the kind she heard among the Dalish and the kind heard in backwoods villages. If she couldn’t hear alienage in him, there was no way he could hear the alienage in hers.

And then he turned away, and she found herself following him as he paced towards the little ledge overlooking the lower parts of Haven, his arms crossed behind his back as he said, “I’ve journeyed deep into the ruins of ancient ruins and battlefields to see the dreams of lost civilizations. I’ve watched as spirits clashed to reenact the bloody past of battles known and long forgotten.” He turned to her.

“Every war has its heroes,” Solas said. “I was just wondering what kind you’ll be.”

“ _War_?” She asked. “I don’t know if I’d call an effort to close the massive hole in the sky a war…maybe a cataclysm. And I can’t recall _any_ great heroes from the cataclysm that destroyed Arlathan.”

“It is a manner of speaking,” Solas said impatiently, “but certainly if you are successful, you will be remembered. But how is what I do not know.”

She huffed. “What does it matter? People will remember what they want to remember about me.”

“Well said.”

More backhanded praise. Her face must have spelled it out to Solas, because he almost immediately asked, “Have I offended you?”

Kallain turned it back on him. “Have I offended _you?_ ”

Solas raised a brow. “Why do you ask?”

That wasn’t a no, but he’d turned the question back to her again in a particularly grating way.

“The very first thing you asked me was if I was Dalish because you’d had _run ins,_ ” she threw on her very best backwoods elf accent as she mimicked him, “with my people before. You dislike us?”

“Ah.” Solas stroked his chin and glanced away. “When I attempted to share knowledge with your people, they attacked me for no other reason than their own superstition.”

This rang strangely to Kallain. When she encountered the Dalish, it was a young child who found her, confused and unaware of what she intended to do to herself, or who she was, or what she had done. He offered to take her to a safe place, and that turned out to be the clan encampment, where she was greeted warily but warmly, like a long-lost cousin, and it was not long before she was taken in.

Like her father took in Shianni, she thought.

But she didn’t care to tell Solas, even vaguely, where she had come from before she joined the Dalish. She had let Kallain Tabris die when she allowed Deshanna to mark her for Andruil. That had been the promise of the Creators – they were unconcerned with sin and redemption, only with philosophy and skill, and she did not have to be anyone at all.

“Ir abelas, harhen” she said. “If my people have done you some disservice, then allow me to make it right. What would you suggest?”

Solas’s expression softened some, and what he said next irritated Kallain more than a direct insult would have. “You are right, of course. The fault is mine for expecting of the Dalish what they could never truly accomplish. Ir abelas, da’len.”

Part of her had found some of the Dalish as condescending as Solas was now, treating her like a lost child who didn’t know anything. But they had not been entirely wrong. Kallain had been raised to think of the Dalish as happy wood elves who spent their days happily following their white deer and living free from human rule. She’d been shocked to find how fragile their lives were – every bit as fragile as the life she’d led in the alienage – and how hard the forage was when it was not just for one family but for an entire clan.

She’d had to prove herself, at first. It was not a given that her mother had trained her well, as it was in Denerim, and her name meant nothing to these people. There was no Adaia to them, no Cyrion. Only Kallain, a bare-faced elf wandered in from the city. Once they knew she could shoot, and could hunt, and forage, and work leather, once they knew she was _useful,_ however, their tune changed. Most of their lost city-born cousins didn’t know these things, after all, and had to learn from nothing, but her mother’s training had set her apart from them.

It wouldn’t make any difference to Solas, though. She was just a Dalish hunter, after all.

“If I can offer any understanding,” Solas said, “You have but to ask.”

She wondered for a moment what he would even say if she asked him about cities, if he would regale her with his own time in an alienage somewhere. He couldn’t have been in one for very long, though, and if he had she couldn’t draw attention to Denerim or Highever, where her reputation was surely dirt. The best she could hope was that they thought she died.

So instead she let Solas tell her about the elves of Arlathan, who he spoke of just as wistfully as either Valendrian or Deshanna, and promised that it was a city of magic and beauty, and that Halamshiral paled in comparison. Not new information, not exactly. But she nodded appreciatively all the same.

The Dalish came up as a point of comparison as, “Children acting out stories mangled and repeated a thousand times.”

She wondered what Solas would think of her – an alienage elf who decided to flee. Kallain’s ears pricked with irritation, and she snapped, “And what of the elves in the Alienage, who aren’t Dalish?”

“Why?” Solas asked derisively. “What would it benefit a poor man in an elven alienage to learn that his ancestors once strode the land like gods? It would only make him bitter.”

Kallain could not help the skeptical expression that crossed her face, nor the crossing of her arms.

“Or inspire him to take a foolish risk and get himself killed.”

Thoughts of her mother sprang to mind, of her boots, and the dagger on her hip salvaged from Halamshiral before the Dales were sacked, but so did thoughts of her father, of Valendrian, who knew where they came from and carried themselves with pride, if only among their own people.

“You’ve decided their reactions for them,” Kallain said sternly.

She could have continued – even elves who carried themselves meekly found themselves subject to violence and oppression, not just the ones who dreamed of Elvhenan. Her family knew this too well by now – that whether they were strong and proud as Adaia or as meek and accommodating as Soris there was no guarantee of safety. She thought of her would-be husband, who had done nothing to raise Vaughn’s ire, but still paid for his nonexistent offense with his life.

But she couldn’t make herself say it.

“Perhaps I have,” Solas muttered. “Excuse me, but – your speech. It differs from others among the Dalish.”

_Shit._

“Maybe,” Kallain said hurriedly.  “Can’t all have the same voice after so many years wandering apart, now can we?”

Solas nodded, and said, “Yes.”

Kallain might have prodded him for changing the subject, but she didn’t even _know_ him, much less what he was up to. And it’d be easier to keep it that way, while he still thought she was nothing more than a happy woodland elf with a funny accent.

He was one to talk. She couldn’t really place his accent.

“Another time then, lethallin,” she promised.

Solas barely smiled back at her.

Now she knew she was being snubbed.

\---

 She got the sense that neither Cassandra nor Solas really expected her to be able to fight, and while she’d often used her slight, unassuming frame to great advantage growing up in Denerim, it only irritated her to have Cassandra and Solas stepping in to protect her so often. Varric seemed to trust that she could handle herself, at least, and so she gravitated towards him when they had a few moments to spare. He’d advised her early on to turn tail and run as soon as she got the chance, and she had laughed and said, “Andraste’s tits, if you only knew.”

And then his face crumpled into this wry little smile as he reminded her, “Sylaise’s stockings, I think?”

And Kallain remembered Dalish elves didn’t yell _Andraste’s tits_ at the top of their lungs and she muttered, “Yeah. I’ve spent too much time with you, I guess.”

And then she’d retreated once again, barely speaking to anyone if she could avoid it. Varric, however, wormed his way back into her heart with invitations to the tavern and offers to share a hot food and maybe a drunken tale or too. Except Kallain never let herself get too drunk or tell too good of a tale. All of her best tales were from her younger days, back at home with her father and Shianni, because she mostly kept to herself among her clan.  

Varric drank enough for both of them, and she sipped meekly at a mug of Ferelden beer she’d craved for so very long when what she really wanted to do was drown her sorrows and feel _normal_ for once.

Varric was easy to talk to. Too easy to talk to, but talking to him made her feel more normal than anything else did.

She loved her clan. She did. But she was always a little foreign among them, always their weird Ferelden cousin who didn’t know all the Creators by heart and who swore by Andraste’s knickers. The one who had to grow up surrounded by shemlen, which was such a terrifying prospect to these free elves that she might as well have claimed to have been raised by wolves for the terrified looks it got her.

But it all worked out. Varric talked enough for the both of them, and she could listen to more yet unpublished _Tales of the Champion_ and feel like the no-named elf she was born to be.

\---

“Kallain, you do not talk much about your family,” Cassandra noted over camp. “It occurs to me that I do not know much about you. Where are you from?”

Part of Kallain was tempted to shoot back that it was intentional. Her impulse was to tell the truth, but what came out was a partial truth at best. “My clan primarily roams the Free Marches.”

Cassandra nodded, as if that answered everything, and Kallain was relieved to have satisfied her curiosity. Solas, who sat not far from Kallain, sketching in his journal with a bit of charcoal, glanced up expectantly, as though he expected more than just where she was from.

“Sorry to disappoint,” Kallain said. “I’m a bit boring. If you want a good story, ask Varric.”

Cassandra snorted, and Varric cackled in reply. “Ah, come on Boss. You’ve got something good in there. I know a good story when I smell it.”

Now both she and Cassandra were united in their desire to _kill_ Varric.

She avoided most conversation, which did not go unnoticed by either Solas or Varric. Cassandra seemed to tolerate silence the best, so Kallain stuck at her side. Besides – both of them took to the front lines when they fought, and it suited her better to let Solas and Varric chat each other up behind her. Let them take interest in each other, instead of prodding her.

She was alright with quiet. She’d clung to it even after her new clan began to accept her as a permanent fixture. Once they were certain she was to stay, they tried to pull her in, talk to her, sing with her, befriend her. And she couldn’t bring herself to let them.

She took on primarily solitary tasks. Scouting. Hunting alone. Trading when it came to it, since she knew how to speak to humans without sparking offense.

She wished that she could do the same here, but she wasn’t strong enough to close rifts filled with demons by herself. If she tried to pick them off slowly, more would come through to take their place.

She didn’t like needing people. She particularly didn’t like being needed.

She was not pleased that her first mission led her to the Hinterlands, where she remembered long excursions with her mother, camping under the stars, learning to shoot in secret and picking herbs for healing or poison.

Adaia had been matter-of-fact in her teaching. If Kallain picked the wrong herb, she’d declare her “dead” and send her back to find the correct one. When she was still new to her bow, her mother made her shoot until she could hit the target ten times without missing, until her fingers and arms were sore. Once she improved, it became a matter of shooting the inner circle ten times without missing, and finally the center mark. The same standards were set for daggers.

Sometimes she’d be up til it got light out before Adaia finally let her stop.

Kallain knew the Hinterlands well. Or at least she thought she had.

The landscape was wrecked by fires and pillars of ice and earth that raked the earth and toppled great trees and crushed small cabins. Villages her and her mother had once visited in search of old friends, old elves with hands calloused from shooting their bows, free of cities as much as they could be. Now they were gone. Kallain wondered if they survived.

Based on the smell of charred flesh, probably not.

“You alright there, Tiger?”

She had been staring too long. She sighed. “Just a moment. I’m going to see if they’ve got anything useful.”

Cassandra scowled.

Kallain cocked her head. “The dead don’t have much use for food, medicine or coin, the last I checked.”

“Do as you will,” Cassandra said flippantly.

It wasn’t until very late in the night, when everyone else was already asleep, that Solas accosted her while she cleaned her knives and said, rather than asked, “You know these lands.”

Kallain held Fang in her hand, and wondered if the Dread Wolf perhaps favored her, since she held his tooth. She chanced a lie. “No. But I know many lands across the Waking Sea, and they aren’t so different from each other. Rivers only flow so many ways.”

Solas nodded, and sat across the fire from her. In the distance, Kallain could hear howls of wolves and the mating calls of owls and the last vestiges of battle waning over another hill.

“Shouldn’t you be asleep?” Kallain said, watching the fire’s reflection across her blade.

“I could ask the same of you.”

Kallain shrugged. “I’ll sleep. In a bit. I like to have all these things done before I wake.”

“That knife you carry,” Solas asked, “It is quite old.”

Kallain nodded. “As old as the Dales, or older. It belonged to my mother.”

Solas nodded. “Do you call it anything?”

“Fang,” Kallain said. “Well, The Fang of Fen’Harel. But that’s a mouthful.”

Solas’s brow quirked. “Interesting.”

“Adds a bit more weight to the threat – _Dread Wolf take you_ – doesn’t it?”

Solas laughed. “Indeed it does.”

Kallain tucked Fang safely back into its scabbard, and latched it to her belt. “I guess I can’t blame you for procrastinating on sleep. Varric _snores._ ”

“Does Cassandra?”

Kallain shrugged. “No, but she fights in her sleep. Good thing her sword’s not in the tent or we'd have a real problem.”


	5. The Truth

Kallain had not meant to laugh at Cassandra when she asked if she believed in the Maker.

There was a time, long ago, when she sang the chant like a good little elf and prayed to the Maker and Andraste both. But there were also times when she cursed their names, when she demanded answers to a silent sky. Why her mother. Why her. Why why why. They were so wise, this human god, this human prophet who had no answers for her.

She remembered smashing a little ceramic statue of Andraste in anger when she first learned of the canticle of Shartan. Her father had not scolded, only asked her why, and she said, tears in her eyes, “She let them forget Shartan, Da. She let them forget about him.”

Her mother had slung her arms around her and cradled her head in her hand. After they cleaned up the pieces, they embarked on another lesson, where Adaia said, “Humans are always quick to forget the sacrifices of elven soldiers, whether they be Shartans, Wardens, or Night Elves. That’s why we take what we can, Kallain, and live as well as we can in the shadows. Come on now. Keep both eyes open when you shoot.”

Cassandra stood, red in the face, as Kallain cackled wildly at the suggestion that she believe in a god that did not care one whit about her.

On another occasion, Cassandra said quietly, “You are _familiar_ with the Chant.”

The lie came quickly – “I decided to read it before I came, in case I needed to pass for a good little Andrastian.”

Cassandra harrumphed and continued about her business.

Varric, on the other hand, had certainly discovered her lie. He said nothing in front of Solas, or the Seeker, but in private he asked, “So when did you first join your clan?”

Kallain gave a lie that wasn’t quite, “I transferred from another clan when I was seventeen.”

Just old enough to marry. She’d left her first home, her first _clan_ if the term were to be used in its most basic sense. But Varric cracked a knowing smile and said, “Well Tiger, you tell me when you’re ready. Whatever that story is, it’s gotta be a damn good one.”

“It isn’t,” she promised.

Solas, to Kallain’s delight, had never even set foot in an alienage. It explained how he could speak so freely about them, as if he knew who they were, and what they were, and what was best for them. It was always so easy to judge the little people from afar, to think that he could do better in their situation. After all, it would _never_ be his situation. He was born free, and lived free, and why shouldn’t he judge them for their own oppression?

“That’s rich,” she told him. “Never. And you think you know them.”

Solas raised a brow. “And you’ve been to many alienages?”

“More than you,” Kallain replied.

Solas seemed baffled by this answer, as if a Dalish elf should know Alienages. But after all, he must have presumed, the Dalish sometimes traded with their sedentary cousins, and Clan Lavellan was more accepting of city folk than most.

“Your clan has more interest in the outside world than most,” Solas said.

If only he knew.

\--

If there was anything Kallain had not missed about Denerim, it was hearing the word _knife-ear._ When she was much, much younger, she’d tackled a human boy into the mud and punched him over and over until her father pulled her off. It was the only time he’d ever hit her, just to appease the boy’s mother. When they’d gotten home, he’d held her close and begged her never to do that again.

 _Flat-ear_ hadn’t lasted long in her clan. Firstly, the Keeper disapproved of such language, and scolded anyone who she caught using it. And it didn’t have the same sting to it. Maybe because it was followed by a snicker and not a fist. She couldn’t bring herself to be more than mildly annoyed. Once she had her Vallas’lin, the accusations of her flat ears stopped.

 _Rabbit_ was the worst, she decided, because it came off the lips of lechers and she couldn’t do anything to stop it.

This man in Val Royeaux who thought to call her such received a death glare, and, were he not entirely outnumbered by her and her entourage of skilled warriors, he might have earned a fist to the mouth from Kallain. Instead, Cassandra moved between her and him and stood, her shoulders square, her lips a sharp scowl.

“Excuse me?” She demanded.

Where the man felt free to harass Kallain, he didn’t even dare meet Cassandra’s eyes. He muttered a quiet apology and Kallain could not help but smile.

She shook Cassandra’s hand after that, and said, “That was excellent.”

Cassandra smiled back, and finally they had found common ground. A desire to punch perverts in the mouth.

\---

Red Jenny spoke in a full-on Denerim twang and Kallain was so shocked to hear it that she kept her mouth firmly shut until all of their enemies were dispatched. Once she had a better look at her, she decided that Sera was too young to have known her back in the alienage – she would have been a young child then, and Kallain knew all of the children in the Alienage and all of their parents and she had absolutely no idea who Sera was.

And, well, at that time she needed all the help she could get. So she let Sera come back to Skyhold with her, and hoped she wouldn’t recognize the alienage in her voice.

Later, she would learn, Sera was yet another elf with next to no knowledge about the alienages. Which irked Kallain, as she claimed to want to help little people. People people, she said, not elves. But Kallain could let it slide, because Sera was ignorant, and that meant that she did not know Adaia or Cyrion either.

Vivienne, on the other hand, Kallain disliked for other reasons. She did not know the elves in the alienage, but she looked on them as most nobles looked on most commoners. They were not important, not worth mentioning.

But still, it was better than the alternative.

\---

“I have done some investigating regarding your past…”

Leliana’s voice was calm and low, the way it had been in Haven, the eye to Cassandra’s storm. It was only her and Leliana in the war room, no prying eyes that Kallain could see, and she spoke in a low voice so that no one could hear through the door.

“…And I wanted to know how you would prefer I respond.”

Kallain almost hadn’t heard the last part. Leliana was businesslike. Unconcerned. Kallain felt her heart beating in her throat.

“Well,” Kallain said, “What did you find?”

Leliana frowned. What came next was dispassionate. Clinical. “I know that you were born in Denerim to Cyrion and Adaia Tabris. When you were thirteen your cousin Shianni was brought to live with you. And when you were seventeen you were wedded to one Nelaros, who died on the night of your wedding. Additionally, on the night of your wedding you were accused of robbing a local lord. Further rumors would suggest that you sold your cousin to this same lord. You disappeared before the charges could be raised, and, as it seems, joined with the Dalish.”

Kallain could only nod mutely. That about summed it up. “Leliana, I’m sorry.”

Leliana waved her off. “These accusations are likely to resurface along with others from the Chantry. I am not here to pass judgement.”

“You should,” Kallain said. “What I did was unforgivable.”

Leliana let out a long breath. “I am here to handle this situation. We can deny these allegations—”

“No,” Kallain said. “I can’t do that.”

Leliana nodded. “I understand. However, we should explore every option as a possibility while we have time to plan.”

“Yes,” Kallain said quietly. “I know. I’m sorry – I’m making this more difficult.”

She received no sympathy from Leliana, and she was glad, because she didn’t want it. She let Leliana explain to her the potential ramifications of acknowledging the claims, and of denying them, and of ignoring them entirely. There were so many claims about Kallain being passed around that one more was no crisis.  

“Can I talk to Shianni somehow? Invite her here—”

“I do not think that would be wise.”

 _Fuck being wise,_ Kallain thought. But she bowed her head and ran a hand through her hair. “Alright. Then send her support. Money. Anything.”

Leliana sighed. “Kallain, our resources are limited for now. Focus on attaining them, and I will see what can be done.”

“Do we know how she is?”

Leliana nodded. “She’s well. She’s become a figure of prominence in Denerim. I met her, some years ago, when I travelled with the warden.”

“Was she alright?”

Leliana gave the slightest fragment of a frown in response, and, finally, gave the venom Kallain so craved. “No thanks to you.”

Kallain reveled in it. “Thank the Maker for that.”


	6. The Lake

When Kallain was but twelve years old, Adaia took her to Lake Calenhad, led her out on a rowboat, and asked, casually, “What would you do if you fell in, dear?”

“You’d help me back up,” Kallain said confidently.

Adaia smiled softly. “And what if I didn’t?”

Kallain had to think for a second, as her mother moved the boat through the murky waters. It was a deep lake, she thought. She could drown. Fully clothed, she wasn’t sure she could swim to shore. She looked around, saw few places she could find purchase if it came to it.

“I think…” she said softly, putting the back of her thumb to her lips… “There. Where it’s lighter. It’s shallower – I could swim there and lose some of these clothes until I made it to the other end.”

Adaia patted her on the head. “Let’s row over and see if it’s really shallow enough for that.”

\---

Kallain found Blackwall a rather strange and funny human, with a beard too long, thinking he was training those disorganized farmhands to fight with purpose. Mostly, they were useless. If it hadn’t been for Blackwall, a trained soldier, a Grey Warden – her mother had always spoken respectfully of the Wardens – they’d have buckled and fled. Or died. That was also a possibility.

He didn’t know anything about the Breach, and claimed he hadn’t been in contact with the other Wardens. A shame. Leliana would be disappointed. More than she already was.

But he wanted to help, and shit, they could use all the help they could get. So Kallain waved him on and he followed them back to camp.

The next one, the Iron Bull, Kallain saw as he finished the last of a squadron of Tevinter soldiers. Kallain had been fortunate enough never to meet any Tevinters before, and she was rather pleased her first meeting involved their faces in the dirt.

She was surprised to find he came with a party of his own, one that included two elves and a short Tevinter man in Marcher armor. But neither of the elves hailed from Denerim or Highever, so Kallain let them stay as well.

Bull wasn’t half bad, for a self-proclaimed Qunari spy.

She wondered what they would think of her, if they knew.

\---

“Sera,” Kallain warned, “Be civil. Please.”

Sera had yet to stop pestering Solas with pranks and jeers and the occasional prod or deposit of a lizard into the back of his shirt. Kallain held one of them in her hand,  cupping it around the chest with its rear legs dangling as it tried to run but found no purchase.

“What? I thought he’d like a friend!”

“Come on now, Sera,” Kallain said. She was sounding very much like her mother now, her tone light and airy and not at all angry – Adaia’s anger was never for her own kin. “If you want to stay and help you’re going to be here a while. You really want to spend the whole time watching over your shoulder? You don’t think he might try and get back at you?”

“Nah, Solas is way too knobby for that,” Sera said.

“I’m only saying,” Kallain said, “Pissing off the man who puts barriers on you…not your best plan. But hey, bring me the lizards if you find any more…I can think of a few uses for them.”

Kallan could _hear_ Sera’s grin.

\---

“How old are you, anyway?” Blackwall asked, looking over Kallain. They’d been walking for some time, and it wasn’t the first time she’d been asked that question. And it was harder than it should have been to keep track of. After her wedding, there’d been a long stretch where she simply didn’t know what day it was. She’d made her way out of Ferelden in the cargo hold of a ship and didn’t see a single sunrise or sunset for at least a few days, and then she'd lived out of a sewer for a few weeks after that.

It couldn’t have been an entire year before she joined her clan though, and there the issue was more that namedays weren’t kept track of quite as strongly. It didn’t matter what day she was born. She picked a month and decided that was when she’d age herself up.

She was seventeen when she’d been married. Something shy of a year on her own, she thought. And then, when she’d finally joined the Dalish, she’d probably just turned eighteen.

“Twenty-eight, now,” Kallain said.

“Really?” Blackwall said. “You talk older.”

“It felt a lot longer,” Kallain admitted. “I think living through the Blight aged me a decade on its own. Don’t know how your beard’s still black and not streaked white by now.”

Blackwall chuckled. "Oh, you think that, but I've been plucking white hairs for twenty years now."

Kallain smirked. "Me too."

\---

“Bull.”

“Boss.”

Kallain cocked her head. “I’m not your boss, you know. That’d be Cassandra. Or whoever you write your letters to.”

“Whatever you say,” Bull said. “Boss.”

\---

Four rifts in one day and Kallain was out like a light when it was time for bed. She cleaned her blades, stretched, put her hair up so it wouldn’t knot, and then she laid down, shut her eyes, and it was morning. Four more rifts in one day, much the same. When they found there were no more rifts to close in their area, they could move on.

 “That seems to be the last of the rifts here,” Solas said with a light nod. “Shall we move on?”

No, she thought, because the next logical point to visit would be Redcliffe, which Kallain had no desire whatsoever to visit.

She’d have to. Eventually. But she couldn’t stop wondering who she’d see there. Friends of her mother? Former Night Elves? Would they recognize her by face, or by name if not? Had her voice lost enough of that Denerim rattle to leave her unassuming and indistinct?

If she threw her voice further in an impression of the rest of her clan’s hunters, would her team rat her out?

If Leliana knew, Kallain thought, the rest of them could too. Varric already knew she wasn’t born Dalish. Solas and Vivienne each noted they couldn’t quite place her accent. And Bull, well, Kallain wondered if he’d even care what she’d done. The Qun seemed as apathetic towards sin as the Creators.

“Yes,” Kallain finally said. “Let’s.”

There was one final rift in front of Redcliffe, which was easily closed. The second it shut, the gate to the little lakeside town was thrown open. She’d been before, a few times, and it was less hostile to elves than Denerim proper. They didn’t have an alienage with its own taverns and shops and the shopkeeps here needed coin where they could get it. So her mother made friends by trading mushrooms and deer carcasses for favors. A borrowed boat here, a bit of medicine there.

“They don’t have to like you, Kallain,” Adaia had said. “Not if you’re useful. If you’re useful enough, like will come later.”

But there was not a soul Kallain recognized to greet her.

No familiar fishermen or farmers ready to trade medicinal herbs and meat for grain and favors, no fletcher with a hidden stock of arrows for the hunter who brought him hare, no tavernkeep who begrudgingly let Kallain and Adaia eat at the bar provided they were quick and quiet and Adaia kept bringing mushrooms.

“Everyone’s gone,” she muttered to herself.

Varric said nothing, at least, but Cassandra squinted and said, “No, there are mages up on that hill.”

Mages, sure, but everyone she knew was gone. But Kallain remembered who she was meant to be, and it was not Adaia’s girl but a Free Marches wild elf who’d never had any cause to be in Redcliffe. But still, something felt wrong, and before they even reached the old windmill, she turned to her party and said, "Something's off here. Be on your guard."


End file.
